Nancy Ann Lackey Launt was born to Marie Leona (Lee) and Arthur Lackey on May 19, 1972 in Lowell, Massachusetts.  Nancy never knew her biological father.  He left the home before she was born.  When she was 4 years old, Nancy, her 2 older brothers, Paul andArthur, and her baby sister, Kimberly, were removed from her mother by the Department of Social Services.  The children were placed in foster care.  A year later, Nancy came to live with us, Robert and Donna Launt and our 2 children, Debbie and Robert.

Nancy worried about her biological brothers and sister.  She worried about how they were doing.  She had dreams about them.  She couldn't remember whether what she was dreaming had really happened or not.  When I found her brothers and sister, I insisted on the children meeting together so Nancy could see they were all all right.  I then made sure the children had days together until we left the state of Massachusetts.  We left in 1981, after Bob was hired by Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace.

We adopted Nancy when she was 8 years old.  Nancy loved us and considered us her family.  However, she knew she had another family.  They were also a part of her.  Adopted children, if they know their birth family, should be part of both families, if at all possible.  Nancy needed permission from us, her adopted family, to be part of her biological family.  We gave her that permission.  Nancy, also needed permission from her biological family to be part of her adoptive family.  When Nancy, about the age of  13, again had contact with her biological mother, Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey did not give her this permission.  Nancy told me Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey said Nancy should be with her.  Hence, Nancy started to be torn between the two families.  She felt she had to love one family or the other.  She did not feel a complete part of either family.

During this same time period, the media was broadcasting, in a very big way, children should not be removed from their biological parents, children should look for their biological parents, biological parents should keep their children instead of giving them up for adoption, biological parents should look for their children.  When the biological child and parent finally came together, the missing part of the child would fall into place, because the parent would be very happy to be reunited with the child.  The implication being the adoptive parents could never provide the child with a total and proper sense of self.  Therefore, while Nancy was feeling torn between her families, all she heard was she should be with her biological family since only they could properly provide her with a sense of herself.  When Nancy discussed the problem of where she belonged with her friends, they supported the media's point of view.  After Nancy left, I found writings in her room, in which she said we had done a very good job of caring for her, but now it was time for her to be with her biological mother.

Nancy never realized all her contact with her biological mother was initiated by herself.  Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey never initiated any contact (to my knowledge), she simply responded to Nancy's contact.  Nancy did not even wonder why she was the first one to write the first letter.  She had learned of her mother's address from one of her biological brothers.  Her mother could have gotten Nancy's address from the same brother.  When Nancy was on the phone with her mother, she would ask questions.  If she did not get the answer she wanted, Nancy kept pushing, until Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey finally gave the answer Nancy wanted to hear.  Nancy could not see this.  I tried gently to point this situation out to her.  Nancy just would not accept this point of view from me.

Nancy, somehow, convinced her mother to come from Massachusetts to visit her in Maryland, where we lived.  In October, 1988, Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey, her live-in boyfriend Richard Lackey (Nancy's biological father's brother, i.e. Nancy's uncle), and Nancy's oldest biological brother, Paul, came to Maryland for a weekend.  Nancy asked me if I would like to meet her mother.  I said yes.  But Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey did not want to meet me.  Nancy asked if this was all right.  What could I say, except yes.  I was not going to put Nancy in the middle of what would then have been a very unpleasant meeting.  Nancy had a wonderful time with the Lackeys.  I asked what they did.  She said they laughed and giggled and tickled each other a lot.  Nancy said her mother was all better.  She no longer had the problems which caused her to lose her four children.  Nancy was on cloud nine.  Everything was as she had dreamed it would be.  But all I could think, was how easy it was to be on your best behavior for one weekend.

A week or so later, it was my birthday.  Nothing very special was ever done for my birthday other than cooking something I especially liked for supper.  But this year, when I came home from work, I found the dining room table set with the good dishes, Bob, was cooking something extra special, everyone was there, including Nancy's boyfriend.  She was showing me all the work she and Nate did for the party, which she informed me was their idea.  She had even made a big banner which said Happy Birthday Mom.  I knew she was telling me she loved me, just the same as she did before she met her biological mother.  She was trying to say she loved us both.

Everything was nice and normal for a couple of weeks.  Nancy behaved and misbehaved like any normal teenager.  Then things changed.  Nancy became the perfect teenager.  Now I realized how troubled she had become.  No one should be that perfect.  The perfect phase lasted awhile, then the trouble started.  Nancy started to create situations to make us angry at her, so she could then get angry back at us.  This anger towards us allowed her to believe we didn't love her anymore.  Hence, she had a very good reason to leave us, to go live with her biological mother.

A couple weeks after her 17th birthday, Nancy came home past her curfew.  She did not think I would be awake enough to notice.  However, I was waiting for her.  There were words about her being late.  She just yelled, she had had it.  Then she walked out the front door to a waiting car.  She had had no intention of staying home that night.  A friend of Nancy's found her and let me know where she was.  This friend, also, convinced Nancy to call me.  She was staying with her "boyfriend" (she just dumped her real boyfriend the previous week for no reason) and his parents.  I convinced her to give me an address and phone number.  My husband and I drove by the place and saw it was just as she described it.  I could tell from talking to her, she was not at all ready to come home.  I thought if I let her cool down, she would come to her senses and return home.  Nancy stayed there about a month.  Then she disappeared.  After a couple of weeks of no word about her, I filed a missing persons report with the police.

I later learned Nancy left the place she had been staying  after she had a fight with the boy.  She then went to live with another friend.  His parents said she could only stay 2 weeks.  Somehow, in these 2 weeks, she convinced Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey to send her bus or train fare to get up to Massachusetts.  I learned about this 6 months after the fact, from a friend of Nancy's.  This friend told me Nancy called her the night before she left for Massachusetts.  She said Nancy was all excited about leaving early the next morning to go live with her biological mother.  This was early to middle August, 1989.

I had someone call the mother's house in the fall.  He pretended to be an old boyfriend and asked to speak to Nancy.  He was told no one by that name lived there.  I did not learn Nancy had actually gone to Massachusetts until later.  I was not surprised.  Nor was I surprised her existence there was not acknowledged.

Beginning late October, or early November, I started to get phone calls at home, when I was the only one there, and at work.  No one ever talked.  These silent phone calls came before there was very much computer dialing by telemarketers.  I thought these calls were prank calls.  Finally, it dawned on me, these calls were coming to both home and work.  Maybe these calls were from Nancy.  In early December, 1989 I answered such a call and said, "Nancy, Nancy is this you?"  The silence seemed to get even more silent.  Then the person hung up.  I never received the calls again.  However, the calls continued.  Now they came when Bob would be home and when I would not be home.  The calls suddenly stopped in late December, 1989 or early January, 1990.

In the spring of 1990, I had the same person, who had called before, call Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey's house.  This time, she answered the phone herself.  She told him, Nancy no longer lived there.  Nancy had gone back to Maryland.  I felt she had come back to Maryland to keep an eye on us and be close to us, but had decided not to contact us.  I had no reason to think she was still in Massachusetts.

In the summer of 1990, one of Nancy's friends, Valerie,  told me about a call Nancy had made to a boy in Maryland.  Valerie told me the boy's name.  However, he was someone I did not know, hence I have forgotten his name.  He had given Nancy a special number to call when she needed to talk.  When Nancy used this phone number, the boy ended up paying for the call, not Nancy.  She called him in January, 1990 and talked to him for about an hour.  He had commented on this call to Valerie because he was very angry about the cost of the call.  He had not known, when he was talking to her, she was calling from Massachusetts.  No one in Maryland ever heard from Nancy again.

In December, 1998, I received a call from the Prince George's County police.  The call concerned a discovered body which met Nancy's general description.  The officer said it was probably nothing, since the body had been found a long way from here.  I asked where the body had been found.  The officer replied in Chelmsford, Massachusetts.  I replied Nancy had a connection to Massachusetts.  Massachusetts was where Nancy's biological mother, Marie Leona (Lee) Lackey lived.  I was then contacted by the Massachusetts police and asked for dental records.  The body was old enough that nothing but bones had been found.  I called our family dentist.  He sent bite wing x-rays of Nancy's teeth.  I was then asked for full dental x-rays.  At this point, I, and the police, discovered  x-rays of adults are only kept for 10 years.  They are then destroyed.  Every place I tried, the x-rays had been destroyed.  However, there were so many similarities between the teeth found and the bite wing x-rays, the medical examiner was positive the bones belonged to Nancy.  I was notified of this fact, the Monday before Christmas, 1998.  I was asked to say nothing to anyone, until the Lackey family could be found and questioned.  No official announcement was going to be made until DNA testing could be completed.  The medical examiner wished  to be 100% positive of the identification before officially announcing the bones discovered in October, 1998 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts belonged to Nancy Ann Lackey Launt.

The following links to newspaper articles tell the rest of the official story to date.

The Lowell Sun of Lowell, Massachusetts.   The Lowell Sun Default Frameset
In the left hand frame, scroll down to Search Archives.  Click on that.

Then do a search for "car wash" without the quotes.
The articles of interest are:
 Databases may help ID Skeleton Found in Chelmsford
 Search Widens for Link to Skeletal Remains Found in Chelmsford
 Chelmsford Police Press on in Effort to ID Bones

Then do a search for "Launt" without the quotes.  The articles of interest are:
 Adoptive Mom Makes Anguished Cry for Help to Solve Teen's Death
 Dead Girl's Uncle Convicted in '68 Slaying of Lover
 Brother Recalls Night of Billerica Girl's Disappearance
 'She had Family Who Loved Her'
 Stepfather of Slain Girl Found Dead
 Stepdad: 'You Were Right - I Did It'
 Investigator Hopes Key Answers Aren't Buried With Suspect
 Pain Lingers From 31-year-old Homicide Case
 

The Boston Globe of Boston, Massachusetts
The articles written by Judith Gaines have been archived.  The normal policy of The Boston Globe is to charge a small monetary fee to read an archived article.  However, The Boston Globe has very graciously offered these following 3 articles at no cost for this web site.  I thank The Boston Globe very much.

SAD ANSWERS EMERGE IN CHELMSFORD
By By Judith Gaines, Globe Staff and Caroline Louise Cole
CHELMSFORD -- Nancy Ann Lackey Launt was 17 years old when she left her adoptive home in Maryland in June 1989, and headed to Massachusetts, searching for her biological mother.

© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

LOST IN SEARCH OF LOVE
By Judith Gaines, Globe Staff
Nancy Ann Lackey Launt was 17 and full of hope when she arrived in North Billerica in 1989. For 12 years, she had lived happily with her adoptive parents in Maryland, but she yearned to connect with her biological mother and stepfather.

© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.

MAN CONFESSES TO KILLING TEEN, HANGS HIMSELF
By Judith Gaines, Globe Staff
In a dramatic ending to a case already steeped in tragedy, Richard Allen Lackey admitted in a note that he murdered his 17-year-old stepdaughter, Nancy Ann Lackey Launt, whose bones were found last October behind a Chelmsford car wash, authorities said.

© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.
 

The Boston Herald of Boston, Massachusetts

 Police Identify Bones Found at Car Wash by Jules Crittenden
 Foster Mom Recalls Teen as `Friendly, Caring' by Paul Sullivan
 Stepdad's Suicide Note Admits to Murder of Troubled Teen by Joe Heaney
 

When Richard Lackey took his own life, he left a note.  In the note, Richard Lackey said he killed Nancy.  Richard Lackey did not say how he killed Nancy.  Richard Lackey did not say why he killed Nancy.  Richard Lackey did not say when he killed Nancy.  Richard Lackey did not say who helped him kill Nancy.  Richard Lackey did not say who helped him cover up the killing of Nancy.  Therefore, the police have left the case of the murder of Nancy Ann Lackey Launt open until these questions can be answered.

Nancy died a long time ago.  Everyone questioned by the police had a great deal of trouble remembering the last time they saw or heard from Nancy.  All the police can be sure of, is Nancy was last seen or heard from in December, 1989 or January, 1990.  Hence, Nancy Ann Lackey Launt has an ambiguous date of death.